Silent Night
by Underthedesk
Summary: Severus Snape on a night his thoughts don't have to be quite so closely guarded.  Set during Deathly Hallows so, yes, there are spoilers.  Enter at your own risk.


**Title**: **"Silent Night"**

**Setting**: During Deathly Hallows

**Pairing**: Snape and a night when he doesn't have to control his thoughts so carefully

**Warning: **Yes, spoilers for book 7. Proceed at your own risk.

**Notes**: A quick and dirty fic, but hopefully engrossing. For the purposes of this story, we assume Snape knew part of Harry's secret task was the collection of things, and that they were probably as dangerous as the one that had doomed Albus.

"**His oldest skill felt comfortable..."**

His oldest skill felt comfortable, as comfortable as the Hogwarts robe he had refused to take off after that first visit to Madam Malkin's.

Stepping silently through the woods, Severus spied. He watched the woods to determine their safety (or lack thereof). He watched the Potter boy as he'd once watched Lily. He also watched the Patronus that cost him with each casting. He usually cast it in situations when there was little time for nostalgia but Harry, for all his late night prowling, was not a difficult subject to track. Satsified there were no Death Eaters to thwart or Order members to hide from, this meant Snape could tread behind the beaten path through the woods and let some of his thoughts wander as curiously as the boy ahead of him.

_The boy_. So many years. So many detentions (much of them wasted), so many lessons (much of them useless). Things had changed. Occlumency had changed them the most. Lessons filled with memories at once foreign to Severus and all too familiar. Forced in a toilet, chased up a tree, dogs attacking, adults unnoticing... If Harry's ego hadn't been large enough to encompass distrusting Dumbledore and leaping into that Pensieve, things could have wound up very strangely. Commiseration? Friendship? _With the spitting image of James Potter?_

A shudder ran through Snape that he quickly ascribed to the cold. Snape and Harry, who both knew what it's like to watch the adults of the world disappear when you need them most, who both spent childhoods with the constant tension in their chest that comes from wondering when the next attack would come, wondering if it would it be worse than the others or just the usual evil.

Who both wondered if it was possible to see the image Hogwarts cut against the night sky without remembering the way it looked to a nervous child on a boat, desperately hoping he'd finally come home.

There was no denying Harry was his strange mirror. Or perhaps Severus was Harry's broken one. Take a piece of Lily, but break it against the other side of the Mauraders, the other side of the Sorting Hat's decision…

Now that unbroken reflection was jumping into the water, errant moonlight glittering off something around his neck, flashing the letter S into the night. _Idiot boy! Is he actually wearing it?_ Adrenaline coursed through Snape, the kind he hadn't felt since he found Dumbledore lying on the floor of his office, his eyes rolled back in his head. With silent motions he waved his wand; it was the work of a moment to undo his cloak and jacket. If the boy doesn't surface for air soon everything else would just have to come in with him.

For a terrible second the scene raced through his mind: jumping in, the jarring force of the icy waters, grabbing the body, praying for anonymity, praying for whatever happens when you wear a cursed object and then make yourself even more vulnerable by jumping into a lake to, by some lucky chance, **not** happen.

_And then what?_ A memory charm, surely. _But what if he didn't?_ What if this was the night he could lay again beneath forest bowers and answer questions?

Something about the winter holidays always made strange things seem possible. Not the holiday itself; Christmas for Snape was just another day on the calendar, albeit one usually punctuated with a visit to his rooms from Albus (even if he never felt the things his orphaned boys did, Dumbledore was instinctive enough to understand how to treat them. When Hogwarts is your home the Headmaster is, or should be, family). No, for Snape the strange charm of those weeks was the solitude. Privacy could be found all over the grounds of his castle. Their castle, his but also Harry's. So if Severus was ever again to stare at branches above and share secrets, it would be the sort of thing to happen over winter break.

_Breathe. Wait. He'll need time to pull it up. All might still be well…_

Another fraction of a second and the fear turned personal. Lily's was the only heart he'd ever had and now the one piece of her left in the world was drowning under the weight of a curse, a founders' feud, and – oh, yeah – a frozen lake. _No more!_ He'd just stepped around the trees when he heard the footsteps. As soon as he saw the shock of red hair he knew he was redundant. The seconds that inched by so timorously before now rushed over Severus. It seemed he'd barely breathed before Ron and Harry were sitting happily together, sharing revelations.

_Time to go_, to leave for Hogwarts again. But in the isolated perfection of winter Severus felt the winds on his face not without gratitude. The comfort of having Albus literally over his shoulder everyday came with costs. Every step outside his office was met with either hatred or the pride of arrogant fools, each a form of heat. But here the wind was icy, the forest unconcerned – as nature always is – with any performance or lies he could offer.

The forest had even offered one more chance to call the Patronus, to indulge without indulgence in the two memories he mixed together to make the magic of happy people work for him: there was the kiss, obviously. That hastily stolen moment on the verge of winter break when he and Lily had exchanged gifts under mistletoe. It was one of the few moments in his life Severus truly hadn't planned. A particularly nasty round of taunting had been his gift from the Maruaders, who'd taken special care to wrap it in comments on the likelihood of anyone ever finding him attractive. Severus hadn't told Lily about it, not wanting to explain the round of curses that naturally followed. But she must have found out somehow because she made a point of handing him the first issue of his new subscription to _Advanced Potions Today!_ while standing under mistletoe. Snape replayed in his mind how she'd kissed him on the side of his lips. There was no promise in it, but it was clearly, defiantly, outside the neutral territory of his cheek.

It had been a classic Lily moment. Kissing a friend who'd just been told he could only lose his virginity if he got Filch drunk was just the way logic worked in her world. And tied to this memory would always be that of the other forest, the forest where sunlight always glitters through the leaves and a curious voice always says his name, waiting patiently for Severus to explain the world to come.

_Explain it to me now, Lily. For as long as I breathe Harry will have protection. Is this enough? Will you ride with me on the train again?_

He knew the answers would come just as he knew there was every reason to believe they'd be terrible answers. They could promise a useless death or an eternity of regret (or both). But as horrible as they might prove to be, they were still tomorrow's concerns. For tonight there was a completed task, a winter break, the endless privacy of a sleeping world, and a biting wind against his face to remind him, for better or worse, he was still alive. That meant he might still be useful, might still repair one more break, one more fissure.

For tonight, it was enough.


End file.
